Harry the Poisonous Centipede Goes To Sea. Lynne Banks Reid
fruit, and had fallen to the bottom of the crate, where the centeens could hear them scuttling about anxiously. Harry, especially, was good at understanding other species’ signals. Now he thought, “There’s a lot of fear in here!”
“What’s happening?” asked George in alarm.
“I don’t know. We’re moving.”
With one accord, the two centeens scurried to the nearest long hole, the one they’d tried to squeeze out of before they fell asleep. They put their heads out. Their weak little eye-clusters could just make out bright light (which they hated) and lots of colours and patterns moving past them.
“Where are we? We’re not where we were last night!” crackled George.
“I told you! This is a can’t-get-out! I said we shouldn’t come in here!”
“It’s not a can’t-get-out, Hx. We can get out any time we like.”
“So what’s stopping us?”
They stood side by side on a banana, trying to get their bearings. They were far from the ground – that was obvious. They could see it racing past underneath them. “It’s a long way down,” said George.
“If we leave here we’ll Dry Out,” said Harry. Big-Yellow-Ball was shining hotly. They could feel the heat in the air and see the brightness outside the crate. The heat where they lived was a very damp kind of heat. They sensed they’d be all right as long as they stayed in the moist darkness inside the crate.
“We’d better wait till the moving stops,” said Harry. “And see what it’s like then.”
Meanwhile they tried to behave as if everything was all right, even though they both knew it wasn’t. They went back to their curved nest of bananas. Harry noticed something at once.
“Where’s Mama’s head?”
“Her what?” asked George blankly.
“The tarantula head we saved for her! It’s gone,” said Harry.
“Maybe it’s just rolled away somewhere.”
“No. I wedged it in tightly between these yellow-curves,” Harry said. “Someone must have stolen it!”
They began to quest around them. George suddenly froze.
“Hx, there’s one of us somewhere in here!”
Harry got it too, now. A decidedly pleasant aroma, amid all the whiffs of other, alien creatures like flies, beetles and spiders. Another centipede, certainly, but – different. Different from him, different from George.
“It’s my centeena!” crackled George softly.
“ Your centeena?”
“Well…er…no, not exactly. I mean…I was chasing her – last night – I hadn’t really caught up with her. I was looking for her, you know, following her scent, when I found the straight-up-hard-thing with the tarantula inside.”
“She must’ve got in before us. She’s here with us.”
“Right!” said George eagerly. “Let’s find her!”
It wasn’t hard. Although the crate was big and there were lots of bananas filling most of it, there were plenty of little spaces and chinks where small creatures could hide. As the two centeens searched, they realised that, whatever else might happen, they weren’t going to be short of a bite to eat.
They sent out inviting signals, and after a while a little female head poked out from between two big bunches of bananas.
“Hallo,” she signalled shyly. “Did you call?” Of course they hadn’t called. Centipedes can’t call. That’s just my way of putting it.
Harry watched her creep out until she was in full smell. George immediately went up to her and touched feelers with her, and ran all around her once in greeting.
“I’m Grndd and this is Hx,” he said. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Jgnblm,” she said. All right, no, I’m not proposing to go on trying to write that or expecting you to say it, though I should add that both the centeens thought Jgnblm was a most euphonious name, which means that to them it had a sweet sound.
Let’s see, then. What about Josie?
“What are you doing here?” Harry asked, touching feelers with her very shyly. He’d never touched feelers with a centeena before, except Belinda of course. It felt very nice.
“He was chasing me,” she said, meaning George. “So I just ducked in through one of those long holes to hide.”
“Why didn’t you get out again before it started to move?”
“I don’t know. I think I just liked it in here. I like yellow-curves,” she added, indicating the banana she was standing on.
“You like standing on them?” asked Harry.
“Eating them,” she said.
“You eat tree-droppings?” asked George incredulously.
“Yes.”
“I notice you like tarantula heads, too,” remarked Harry bitterly.
Josie looked puzzled. “What do you mean, tarantula heads?”
“Well, didn’t you take one from just here?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t like eating things that have been alive, it makes me feel a bit sick, so I eat lots of different tree-droppings.”
“Wait a minute. You don’t mean you never eat ordinary things?”
“No. Just tree-droppings,” she said demurely.
There was a silence.
“Hx, she’s a no-meat-feeder,” crackled George under his breath.
A centipede that didn’t like meat and wouldn’t stop anything! They waved their feelers at Josie as if she were not completely centipede.
“Please don’t feeler me like that,” she said. “It’s rather rude.”
“Oh! Sorry,” said George at once. “It’s just – I’ve never met a no-meat-feeder before. What kind of – er – tree-droppings do you like best? I’ve never really bothered to try any.”
“There are so many different kinds!” Josie said eagerly. “One never gets to the end of them!”
“Weird,” crackled George. Harry nudged him with a bump of his middle section.
“I don’t think it’s weird,” said Harry. “It’s interesting. At least you won’t be hungry in here with all these yellow-curves. I wish I liked them.”
“Try one,” said Josie.
To oblige her, Harry bent his head and took a bite.
“Ugh!” he said. “It’s horrible!”
Josie gave a centipedish laugh by shaking all her segments up and down. “No, no, not the outside! You have to get through to the soft, sweet stuff inside.” She caught a ridge of the yellow skin between her poison-claws and neatly stripped it back. “Now try again,” she said.
George backed away. But Harry nibbled a little of the soft white stuff, and then a little more. “H’m. It’s not bad, I must say. Soft as worms. But not a bit like them to taste.”
Josie shuddered daintily. “I couldn’t bear to eat a worm!” she said.
Before any more could be crackled, the jiggling movement stopped. The three of them dashed along a bridge of bananas to the long opening again and stuck their heads out.
“Smell that, Grndd! You know what that is, don’t you?” Harry said in